Mom’s Swiss Chard

By Penny Stine

I visited my parents in Nebraska over the 4th of July. In spite of the fact that Mom turned 75 this spring, she still maintains a huge garden and has several fruit trees. She cans, freezes, pickles and preserves just about everything that she grows, and was disappointed when a late freeze claimed all of the fruit on her trees this year.
When I asked my mom how her garden was this year, she replied, “Terrible.”
Then I went outside for a look-see. If Mom’s garden is terrible, mine ranks somewhere far below horrifically awful. And I didn’t think mine was doing too badly.

Check out these pics:
Mom’s Swiss chard:

You can’t tell by looking at the photo, but Mom’s Swiss chard was about 18 inches tall, with gigantic leaves that looked like elephant ears.

My swiss chard:

Mine’s about six inches tall and bug-eaten.

The only thing that looked better in my garden was the dill, but that’s only because she considers it a weed and has been pulling it out. Our peas look similar, but hers didn’t taste good, so score one for Western Colorado.
Oh, and my mom's garden was virtually weed-free. We spent about 40 minutes outside weeding on Sunday and eradicated them from every inch of her garden... and her garden is huge.